


Time for a Miracle

by ryukoishida



Category: Free!
Genre: M/M, Pet au, kitten Haru
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-07-09
Updated: 2014-07-09
Packaged: 2018-02-08 02:56:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1924101
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ryukoishida/pseuds/ryukoishida
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Makoto takes a drenched kitten home with him one rainy night, he thinks nothing of it. That is, until he gives it a bath the next day, and what comes out of the water almost gives him a heart attack.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Time for a Miracle

"Damn it!" Makoto Tachibana mutters to himself, cursing his forgetful nature for leaving his umbrella behind this morning before heading off to school. As he dashes across the street with his jacket pulled over his head, the clouds overhead seem to turn darker and more menacing by the minute. It didn't look like it was going to rain like this; yet once he stepped out of the school building after swimming practice, it began to rain like the sky is having an emotional breakdown and is taking its frustration out on the humans below in the form of cool, summer droplets of water. 

But just as he's about to turn a corner, he hears a small noise. A squeak. He stops short in the middle of the road, his foot partly in a shallow puddle and raindrops all but forgotten; he tries to pick up the noise again, lowering his jacket and letting the rain kiss his face. Everything around him is monochrome and grey, which makes it hard for Makoto to see, especially through this ridiculous downpour. 

Another squeak. This time a little louder, a little more desperate, as if vying for the tender hearts of any passersby. Makoto steps closer to the source of the sound, eyes squinting in the near-dark, and finally, among the mass of sodden cardboard boxes ready to collapse under the broken awning of a closed grocery store, he spots a pair of dark blue eyes gazing up at him. 

For a few seconds, there's just mutual staring – Makoto's kind green eyes on the creature's searching blue ones. Then it blinks furiously when a drop of rain water slides into its eyes; it makes another mewling noise and something in Makoto's chest stirs. He shrugs off his jacket.

"There, there, don't be afraid," he says in a soothing tone. Carefully as to not scare the animal, the teenager holds out his hand and pauses right before its face, letting it sniff his fingers. When it doesn't try to bite his hand off, Makoto scoops it out from the box as gingerly as he can and cradles it with the jacket, blocking out most of the rain. "Let's go home."

Maybe it's just his active imagination, but Makoto feels that the replying mew coming from the little quivering body in his arms seems to agree with him. 

\---

"I'm home," Makoto announces, stepping through the threshold of the front door. He's so drenched his clothes are clinging to his skin in the most uncomfortable of ways that he feels like he will never be dry again. 

"Nii-chan!" Ran and Ren rushes out to the hallway, their faces alight with smiles and are all ready to give their big brother a hug to welcome him home. But then they see how wet Makoto is, with water dripping all over him and small puddles beginning to form on the lacquered floor, and the children squeal in laughter. 

"Did you fall into a puddle, nii-chan?" Ren asks. 

"Clumsy nii-chan!" Ran sing-songs. Without any warning, Makoto flicks water at them both, which earns him a few disgruntled screeches and giggles from the twins as they run back into the house calling for their parents' help. 

"Come back here, you little monsters," Makoto laughs, following them into the living room. 

"Makoto, you're home later than usual," Mrs. Tachibana turns around from her cooking and takes in her eldest son's very wet state, and the equally wet bundle still held protectively in his arms. 

"What's that you got there?" Mr. Tachibana inquires.

The teenager carefully places the bundle in the centre of their kitchen table and begins to unwrap the wet layers. Ren and Ran, unable to resist their curiosity, shuffle closer and gasp in comedic unison when a small, silvery-blue head of a very soaked kitten pokes its head out. It looks around with its cerulean eyes at each of the Tachibana member, quiet but intelligent, as if assessing them and memorizing their faces, before it lets out a shy mewl and attempts to crawl out of the jacket nest. 

Makoto rescues the feline from the tangle of the cloth and puts him gently down on the surface of the table, rubbing circles on its head with the fur all matted in patches of light and dark grey. 

"Where did you find the poor thing?" Mrs. Tachibana asks, coming over to examine the cat more closely, which is now purring under Makoto's hand. 

"Out on the side of the street in some cardboard boxes," Makoto replies, and looks at his mother with a worry brow, "I just thought I should get it out of the rain; I didn't really think it through..."

"Can we keep him, okaa-san? Can we please?" Ran pleads and her brother is close behind with a "Pretty please with cherries and whipped cream on top?" Makoto immediately knows, even without his contribution, that their parents will not say no to the twins, not when they are in full-force puppy-eyes mode anyway. 

"How do you know it's a male anyway, Ran?" Makoto teases, "She might be offended if you got it wrong."

"He looks like a boy cat, okay?" Ran pouts. Makoto laughs and ruffles her hair. 

"Ran's right," Mrs. Tachibana says after checking, the short time during which the cat – now officially established as a 'boy' – struggles weakly by swatting its paws around. 

"I suppose we could keep him," Mr. Tachibana shrugs, "But we should take him to the vet as soon as possible, just to make sure everything's okay." The twins cheer happily and immediately begin to chatter away, discussing names and where to buy cat necessities. 

"Go take a shower before you catch a cold," Mrs. Tachibana tells her son, "Dinner will be ready soon." 

"Just a minute," he runs upstairs, almost tripping over the steps, and returns with a small towel. He sits down at the kitchen table and begins to rub down the animal, which is staying unusually still. Only his eyes are looking at Makoto steadily, blinking, its triangular ears twitching occasionally. 

When Makoto deems its fur dry enough, he sets the animal down on the ground and watches fondly as it walks towards the chatting children to their delight. From its lanky, though still very graceful, figure, Makoto guesses that the animal must have been close to starving, or at least not having enough to fill its stomach, for quite some time now. The fur is stiff and grainy to the touch, but that's probably due to the dirt particles still stuck to the hairs from days spent outside - nothing a thorough bath can't take care of. 

But those eyes... They seem more human than anything else. Maybe "human" is the wrong word here. ('Because hello, it's obviously a cat, Makoto. Are you insane? Has the rain leaked into your head and drowned your brain?') But there's something about those sombre blue eyes that suggests the creature can understand every word they say. And he should probably be a little creep out about it, but he only has sympathy for the poor animal. 

As he pours milk into a bowl, Makoto wonders about the reason of the cat's abandonment. The nameless cat huddles close to the bowl but does not drink; instead, when Makoto's hand linger, it takes the chance to touch its nose against the boy's knuckles, as if silently saying thanks, and then digs into the creamy liquid. The people who threw out this cat and left it to fend for itself on the street had made a horrible mistake. Deep inside, Makoto makes a promise to himself that no matter what, he would never do such a cruel thing to this being. 

"They're wrong, you know?" That night as Makoto's getting ready for bed, he first makes sure that his companion has a comfortable corner to sleep in his room – a mass of fuzzy blanket that the cat seems to enjoy tangling itself in. He pads to where the grey ball of fur is settled, and pets it from head to tail as it stretches its body languidly. "You deserve better." 

In response, the cat nudges its nose against Makoto's hand, softly acknowledging his words, perhaps, or maybe he's being merely too poetic. 

\---

It's a Saturday the next day, and there's no reason for Makoto to wake up at the godforsaken hour of six o'clock in the morning but here he is, wide awake with his face buried in fur. 

"What the - " he sputters blearily. At the movement of his face, the fur shivers and scrambles off to a warmer spot, which happens to be inside Makoto's blankets and right on his chest. 

"Oy," he peels his blanket off and the cat has the decency to open one eye before yawning widely, its teeth all on display. He picks the animal with both hands and looks at him square in the eye, "How did you get up here then, you sneaky little thing?"

A short but indignant "meow" is all he's getting, apparently. 

"Come on," he secures the cat in the crook of one of his arms, pushes the bangs back from his forehead in an attempt to wake himself up and makes his way towards the bathroom. 

The household is still dark; the pale light of early morning touches the edges of the windows but hasn't reached into the depth of the house yet. Usually, the earliest person to get up on Saturdays is Mr. Tachibana, but Makoto knows his father won't be stepping out of the bedroom for another hour at least.

He clicks on the bathroom light and shuts the door behind him. Hopefully the running water won't be enough to wake his family up. After his own morning routine is done, Makoto begins to fill the bathtub with warm water. The cat, all this time standing by the door, looks up at him and tilts its head. 

"You, my friend, are getting a bath," Makoto says, nodding to the running water. The statement seems to have pushed a button in the animal, because all of a sudden, the seemingly calm cat stalks to the side of the tub with a series of purposeful meows, its tail swishing back and forth in an impatient manner. 

"I thought cats hate water," he wonders out loud. Makoto takes a glance at the cat and chuckles at the way it's literally now clawing the side of the porcelain tub in order to try to get into the water. "I guess you're one of the weird ones, huh?" That scratching is now getting frantic. 

"All right, all right, pipe down, will you?" He turns the tap off and tests the temperature with his fingers. After deciding that the water is at a perfect level of warmth, the brown-haired teenager picks the cat up, and when it realizes that it’s going to finally get into the water, Makoto can feel its body relaxes. The lapping water doesn't reach higher than its chin, but the steam is making the vision a little hazy. Makoto remembers that he needs to get some towels out to dry the cat off later, so he turns around, rummaging through the drawers for some suitable ones. 

Maybe he's too engrossed in the task at hand, or maybe he's still too sleepy to pay enough attention to his surroundings, but he does not hear the foot stepping out from the bathtub, he does not hear the droplets of water trickling on the tile floor in quiet plops like bubbles popping, and he definitely does not hear the squeak of wet skin against porcelain. 

So when he is satisfied with the towels he has and turns back around, who can really blame him for the high-pitched screaming that comes clawing out of his throat when he suddenly finds himself facing another human being, his bright blue eyes quizzical, a mop of straight, blue-grey locks flattened from wetness and familiar triangular ears sticking atop of his head, his hand reaching out hesitantly, and long tail coiling behind the very naked, very male body?

"Oh my god, oh my god," Makoto can't think because that is not how physics work. One minute he's washing his cat and the next there's a naked man with goddamn cat ears and tail standing in its place. He does the first thing that comes to his mind in this dire situation: he grabs the detachable showerhead and turns on the cold water in full blast, aiming the stream of water at the strange man. 

First, there’s gurgling, maybe some flapping limps in panic, and as soon as it has started, it stops, leaving only the sound of the water spray against tiled walls. When Makoto looks down again, a deep frown forming on his face because he knows he'll need to clean up all that excess water on the floor, there the cat is, except its face appears to be more annoyed than its usual serene expression. 

Yes, there it is. Makoto is not imagining things; the cat is definitely glaring at him in earnest. 

"Life's too short for me to have to deal with this," he sighs.

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, it is precisely similar to how Ranma ½ works! And yes it’ll probably become a series now. Maybe. Man, this is like the crackiest shit I’ve ever written as a fanfic writer, but good god does it feel awesome to write ridiculous things sometimes. Hope y’all enjoy this installation of the pet!AU. More will be coming out soon, probably. 
> 
> Also, Haru is supposed to be a Russian Blue; I choose it because of its coat colour and its temperament.


End file.
